and the cowboy's wife

Tuesday 22. September 2015

I’ve been on Bubba’s backside the past couple weeks to bring his homework home! My niece is in the same grade at the same school and she has homework…he should have homework. I get e-mails everyday for the classes he has below an 80%, so I’ve known the classes he’s need to work harder at.

The social studies teacher e-mailed me today to tell me the work that he has that he’s supposed to redo. We sat down at the supper table tonight, he had all his papers out and I helped him to the point of explaining what the question was and what he was looking for in order to find the answer, I refuse to give him the answers or do all the work for him, not a way to learn.

We use the physical dictionary at our house. Yes, I know it’s easier to use the internet, but how does a child learn how to spell in the day of spell check? Every time he needed to know how to spell a word I made him look it up in the dictionary and explain how to look for a word he’s not completely sure how to spell.

We were doing really good until his social studies vocabulary sheet. I was so frazzled that I told him to work on his map worksheet while I tried to figure out the vocab paper. There was a list of pry seven or eight words and then a list of definitions, one of those deals where you put the letter of the definition in the blank behind each vocabulary word.

Really thinking this worksheet came from a different book or something. I’d look each of the words up in the glossary of the book, none of the definitions were even close to any of the words. After about a half hour I told him that he was going to have to go talk to the teacher in the morning, maybe she could help. I was even looking up the word in the text and reading the entire paragraph…nothing!

Had Kirk look at it when he got home from roping. He looked in the glossary, we got out the dictionary…he thought he would be able to say, duh…well, he went so far as to ask Siri and she couldn’t even help!

We’re talking the words scale, latitude, longitude…shouldn’t have been so hard.

So, the phone is gone, along with the tablet and ipod…the boy has to get his homework under control, he’s a smart kid, he needs to push himself and when there is something that he can’t get, like this worksheet, he has to talk to the teacher. He hates asking for help, but he’s just going to have to learn how to give in and ask for help.

Never would have thought 15 years ago that the entire education would be so stinkin’ hard. Guess I don’t remember having to have my folks help me too much when it came to school work. My folks also weren’t strict when it came to grades, mom has said several times over the past several years that they didn’t push grades because neither she nor dad liked school. I remember when we’d get downslips in the mail we’d hear, time to buckle down, and that was it. Think that’s why my brother, sister and I push our kids so hard with their grades.

Thankfully, Kaet is having a lot easier time so far this year with her classes. Last year she struggled so hard just to pass. There were so many times last year that she call me upset, telling me that she knew she was going to flunk out and that she was trying so hard and just couldn’t seem to catch a foothold. Several times she called and would say she wanted to change what she was studying, which was an impossibility where she is because she goes to an agriculture college, that’s it. We just kept telling her she needed to finish the year, that by going to school so far from home was a learning experience in itself that was just as important as her schooling. One of our big goals was her learning she could survive on her own, take care of herself out in the real world and that learn that she doesn’t need to focus on having to have a man to take care of her.

It has been so wonderful watching Kaet blossom over the past month. She’s gotten out and done more outside of school than she was able to last year. Of course the learning part needs to be first and foremost, but it’s so nice seeing her get outside of her bubble.

Love our kids to pieces and push them to succeed so that they can be the best people they can possibly be! Don’t want to see them half ass it. They have so much in them and want to see them fly!